Fifth Third Bank: Stablecoins, the Ultimate Instant Settlement Payment

Igor Istratov (0:00)

And nobody can say exactly where the money movement is happening right now.

So stable coin settlement component helps to solve that. It gives you that near real time movement, known value of the time of the transaction and real traceability, where you can see how payment is moving and settling in real time. And I think in that example, a lot of our clients, they really don't care that it's a stable coin.

They care that the money arrives today and they want to know the cost of it in real time.

Simon Taylor (0:47)

Welcome to Tokenized, the show focused on stable coins and the institutional adoption of tokenized real world assets. My name is Simon Taylor, your host, author of Fintech BrainFood and head of market dev Atempo, and I'm joined as always by Ran Goldenstein, aka Goldi, aka the VP of all of the goodness that is Fireblocks. How are you doing, Ran?

Ran Goldi (1:08)

I'm great. You won't believe it, Simon. They promoted me to be a Chief Payments Officer now.

Simon Taylor (1:14)

You're Chief Payments and Network Officer? I didn't catch that in the notes.

Ran Goldi (1:18)

I'm telling you, they're giving titles to everyone these days.

Simon Taylor (1:21)

Well, I'm long overdue because we've been telling some stories about lots of your clients, lots of your friends in the industry. You are the originator of the term Stablecoin Sandwich, and for that alone, you deserve the upgrade. But we're not alone today. We are joined by a phenomenal guest on Stablecoin Stories. This is Igor Istratov, who leads Digital Assets Products at Fifth Third Bank with a focus on Newline, the embedded banking business. Igor, how are you doing, sir?

Igor Istratov (1:48)

I'm good. Hi, everyone.

Simon Taylor (1:50)

Good. Excited to have you on because Fifth Third and Newline, super interesting business. But before we jump in, Goldi, why don't you just remind everybody what Stablecoin Stories is about?

Ran Goldi (2:01)

Yeah, well, this is not just another podcast where we take five bits of items and we bring famous people from famous schemes and we interview them. No, I'm kidding, Simon. That podcast is amazing. This is actually a spin off of that where we want to tell the stories behind what's happening because the world is filled now with Stablecoins and we'll talk to Igor. The world is getting filled with Tokenized deposits, but there's issuers, there's all the use cases. People are waking up to this new reality of Stablecoins. We want to tell the story behind the coin. And again, we've been doing this for a while. We've talked to remittance companies, to PSPs. We've also talked to banks in the past, but today we're going to talk to Igor. Igor is from Fifth Third, which is again, one of the top 10 banks in the US. They have almost $300 billion in assets, more than $240 billion in deposits. They have more than 1,500 branches across the US, Simon, right? So there's no way you're going to get coffee without seeing a Fifth Third.

And what's most interesting is they're processing more than $18 trillion in payments. And when this bank goes into stable coins, we want to hear why. We want to hear the story. We want to uncover this. Igor, I hope it will be fun for you as it is for us.

Simon Taylor (3:17)

Indeed. So before we jump in with Igor, I just got to remind viewers and listeners that views and opinions of our contributors today are their own and might not reflect those of companies they represent. Please don't take anything we say as tax legal or financial advice. Please always do your own research. And a reminder that, of course, this podcast is made possible by Fireblocks and Visa.

Ran Goldi (3:38)

Igor, let's kick it off because there's a lot we want to ask you. Thank you for coming in. I know that you're now a banker, right? I also brought my suit. I'm not wearing it, obviously, but just for people on video to know that there is one. But you've been on and off in the digital asset space. But really, you've been around this for a decade, right? So you've been to banks, you've been to fintechs, you were product lead at JP Morgan, the blockchain team, you were head of crypto business so far. You tried to avoid crypto sometimes, but you also went into digital asset company that's now running Canton across the world.

I guess, what brought you into this space and what happened there?

Were your parents pissed off every time you went to a crypto company so you had to go back to a bank, but then crypto picked up again, so you went back to a crypto, to a digital asset company and you ended up settled on probably one of the largest banks in the world now doing digital assets. Tell us how you got here, what's keeping you here?